“The possibility that Turkish troops may intervene directly in Libya’s simmer civil war is growing after lawmakers in Ankara approved a military cooperation deal that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed with his Libyan counterpart Prime Minister Fayez Al Sarraj last month. This reflects Turkey’s apparent growing geopolitical ambitions, which have also recently prompted a crisis over maritime boundaries and resource rights in the Eastern Mediterranean and is inflaming a growing divide with traditional allies, chiefly the United States.
On Dec. 16, 2019, Turkey’s parliament approved the agreement that Erdogan and Sarraj had signed on Nov. 27 in Istanbul. This deal reaffirmed the Turkish government’s commitment to providing military assistance and materiel support to the internationally-recognized Government of National According (GNA) based in Tripoli. It also leaves open the possibility for the Turkish military to deploy its own “quick reaction force” in direct support of the GNA. The Turkish and Libyan leaders had met again in Turkey on Dec. 15, but there has been no official announcement of the impending arrival of Turkish troops in the North African country.
There has been a flurry of U.S. Air Force traffic to and from Incirlik in recent days, including a visit by a C-17A transport aircraft from 62nd Airlift Wing at Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Washington state. This unit has the so-called Prime Nuclear Airlift Force (PNAF) mission, making it responsible for air movements of nuclear weapons, which you can read about in detail in this past War Zone story. This followed an unusual sighting of another PNAF C-17A at Volkel Air Base in the Netherlands, another base where the United States keeps B61s.
It is unclear whether or not any of these movements indicate the withdrawal of any B61s, something the U.S. government has been reportedly considering doing since October, or other U.S. forces from Incirlik in response to recent U.S.-Turkish tensions.”
